


How The Garden Grows

by chthonianCrocuta (lovesthesoundof)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 19:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesthesoundof/pseuds/chthonianCrocuta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What business does a scruffy landscaper have asking a classy florist out to lunch, anyway?</p>
            </blockquote>





	How The Garden Grows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mustachioedoctopus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustachioedoctopus/gifts).



> Soundtrack: Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" from the Nutcracker; Sixpence None The Richer's "Kiss Me"

It all began with the roadworks on the bridge, which is a strange thing to say about a relationship but the best way to explain why Jade wasn't at her usual florist's that morning. Traffic had been diverted half way around the city to avoid the storm damage to that bridge, the practical upshot of which was that Jade and her little green bug were mired in a swamp of angry commuters trying to get through the city centre. Even a woman of her sweet and sunny nature couldn't be expected to endure that forever. Something had to give.

What gave, of course, was the plan.

She wasn't really looking for an alternative when she turned off the main road. She'd almost given up, in fact, consoling herself with the idea that Grandpa was probably having far too much fun in the happy hunting ground to notice if she missed leaving him his flowers this week. But then she saw...truthfully she wasn't sure **what** she saw. Something caught her eye - a flash, perhaps, as of sunlight on rippling water - and drew her attention to a shop window as the bug trundled along a hitherto unknown side-street.

  
_SILVER BELLES  
FLORIST_   


The place might as well have been called Serendipity. Jade grinned from ear to ear as she parked the bug outside. She was still grinning when she opened the door, and had to remind herself to soften it a bit. There were enough werewolves around here that her impressive canines shouldn't be **too** much of a shock to anyone, but as Grandpa had always said it was the **principle** of the jolly old thing, m'boy (he'd taken being corrected on that point with surprising aplomb), and one shouldn't go about frightening the ladies with the mighty gnashers before they'd had a chance to warm up to one, so to speak.

Three things then happened simultaneously. The first was a bell jangling merrily somewhere above Jade's head, momentarily drowning out the aging stereo's rendition of Waltz of the Flowers. The second was the scent of blossoms and foliage reaching her nose, coupled with undertones of earth and warm tiles. The third...the third made Jade realise both what it was she'd seen, and that her teeth would **certainly** not frighten this particular lady.

It was the gleam of sunlight on a sun-ward, rippling as it reflected light away from the delicate skin beneath it.

The woman kneeling beside the planter, hands encased in thick leather gardening gloves as she settled a new shoot into its place, was a vampire.

First impressions are made to last. Jade knew that this was no exception. She would always remember the triumphant crescendo of the music as white hands slipped from the gloves, the effortless fluidity with which the proprietress rose to greet her - everything down to the scent of the earth that still clung to her forearms and the smudge of dirt on her brow.

Her name, according to the badge pinned to her apron, was Kanaya.

Jade meant to say something smooth. She meant to say something cool and effortless and cement herself in Kanaya's immortal mind as the kind of person everyone should know. What she in fact said was some jumbled hotchpotch of an excuse about the terrible traffic and the roadworks that had led her here to interrupt a lady's peaceful planting, and she felt like slapping herself in the face before she saw Kanaya's smile - a smile that said _it's okay, I know, I've been where you are right now, just stop and take a breath_ \- and decided that it was all right to be remembered as a giant dorkface instead.

It got easier after that.

They talked as Kanaya wove rosemary into a wreath for her - rosemary for remembrance, she'd explained, and that led to a five-minute tangent about Bayonetta and her **glorious** taste in weaponry which made Jade feel a lot better about the future of this...thing, this whatever-it-was that seemed to be sprouting from the earth between them. Kanaya didn't play games herself, but she was interested in design, especially costume design, and had seen a lot of games viciously beaten into submission by her college roommate (Vriska, dark elf, trouble incarnate but **ever** so handsome), of which Bayonetta was a memorable one. Jade, on the other hand, had borrowed it from **her** roommate's older sister and struggled through the punishing difficulty curve just to play with all of those toys, and when she laughingly admitted this to Kanaya the vampire's smile came back, hinting at the elegant shape of fangs. **Everything** about Kanaya seemed to be elegant. It was mesmerising. Jade was sure **she** never looked this good when she was in the garden.

She only realised she'd said that out loud when Kanaya blushed faintly and redid the last two centimetres of the wreath.

There wasn't time for much more talk than that, though. Another customer wandered in to admire the orchids just as Kanaya finished the wreath, and the invitation to have lunch with her sometime had to be hastier than Jade had intended. Kanaya accepted it nevertheless, seeming surprised but pleased, and after paying for the wreath and thanking her profusely Jade hurried out of Silver Belles with the same friendly chime that had heralded her arrival.

Only once she was out on the street did she look back through the shop window and give Kanaya a wave and a big, wolfy smile.

Though she was already speaking to her next customer, Kanaya subtly waved back.

 

It took a week and a half for the promised lunch date to be fixed, and another week after that for it to arrive. Jade was busy enough with work that she didn't have time to be apprehensive until that morning, whereupon she wasted at least half an hour whimpering at her reflection, wondering what the hell kind of business a scruffy landscaper thought she had asking a classy florist out to lunch, before she managed to so much as glance into her wardrobe...which only confirmed her suspicion that she was terminally frumpy and didn't deserve to be out among clothes-wearing folk. After some more whimpering and a lot of tossing clothes around she settled on her newest and smartest pair of jeans and a shirt with a happy puppy peeking over the word WOOF! that she thought was probably cute enough to excuse her lack of fashion sense - or at least to make Kanaya smile at her again - before yanking on socks and sneakers and haring out of the door, five minutes late.

This was not how she wanted the day to begin, but by the time she was in the bug and driving she was determined to turn it around.

Making up the time in the winding drive to town was asking a lot of the poor bug, but she arrived at the café only moments after Kanaya - who was wearing black, of course, black for protection, a long-sleeved blouse and a floor-length skirt that seemed to swallow all the light around it. It was almost a surprise to see no earth on her hands, no smudge on her forehead. The greater surprise, though, came once they were sitting down to eat, and that was that Kanaya could **talk** if you let her, talk for miles and miles. Jade sat and listened with what she felt sure was a distinctly goofy smile as Kanaya talked about all sorts of things, some of which sank in. The rest was like music, lulling her into a state of calm and making a meal she'd ordinarly have devoured in ten minutes flat last well over an hour. Kanaya had a sister, she learned, one who was apparently ten times more glamorous than Kanaya herself could ever hope to be, a tattoo artist, she'd done the sun ward marks for her, dating some fancy lawyer Kanaya was fairly sure was a dragon, the latest in a string of lovers that for whatever reason hadn't stuck, and she hoped this one didn't end in tears or bloodshed because you know **dragons** , they're possessive at **best** , and Kanaya had mediated quite enough messy breakups in her time, thank you very much - and that was just in one breath. Vampires only needed air for speaking, and in this case that was being thoroughly exploited. (A naughty part of Jade started thinking of **other** ways it could be exploited; the rest of Jade had to firmly sit on it before it made her blush.)

They didn't make it to talking about plants until the fourth lunch date - and though Jade came every week for Grandpa's flowers, they didn't talk about him properly for five months.

When they did, Jade came for the flowers in the evening instead, and asked if Kanaya would like to come with her.

 

It was a much more colourful Kanaya who came downstairs from her flat above the shop to join Jade in the bug. Jade hadn't met many vampires in her time - this was more of a werewolf area, and despite the now long-standing peace the two still tended not to mix - and she felt sure she'd never seen one wear a floral print dress before. She also felt sure she'd never again see one look so **good** in a floral print dress as Kanaya did in hers. There was the cape too, of course, because most vampire cultures felt you ought to have **something** that came with you when you shifted forms, but it didn't detract from the effect.

When Kanaya said she'd made the dress herself, just for fun, for the first time in her life Jade had hope for her future wardrobe.

They drove up to the ridge and parked the bug, then went the rest of the way up to the wolf stones in more suitable shapes. Jade ran on all fours with the wreath of rosemary around her neck, aware of Kanaya as a fluttering shape in her peripheral vision, flitting here and there but keeping pace. The wind was steady on the hilltop; Jade could hear it breathing through the holes in the standing stones, a gentle howling that most found eerie and she found comforting. It was the sound of a wolf place. Of pack. Of home.

And there at last was Grandpa's stone, and there his pistols and pith helmet in the hollow half way up, and there _JAKE BY BECQUEREL OUT OF HALLEY_ carved in underneath, and she gently shook the wreath from around her neck and nosed it into place at the foot. Kanaya alighted on her back, a little clumsily, clutching at her fur for purchase. It felt like a bat's embrace.

"I think you would have liked him," said Jade as she shifted into her hybrid form. Her lupine fingertips traced the letters of her grandfather's name, her great-grandfather's, her great-grandmother's, immortalised in stone. "He definitely would have liked you."

In answer, Kanaya scrambled up to her shoulder and nestled into her mane.

She stayed there, patient and silent, while Jade listened to the howling stones and remembered her Grandpa and all the things he taught her about being an Adventurous Gentle-Person. She even allowed herself to be carried down the hill on Jade's back, but when they got back to the bug she was overcome by a fit of modesty and hid behind the car to put her dress back on. Jade giggled, but she was glad of her own moment of privacy to get dressed. It didn't feel like time for that yet.

The fireflies were out in force by the time they were both decent again, groping around for something to talk about that didn't seem too dark or heavy after the time spent by the stones. Kanaya said it was beautiful here; she understood why she hadn't come before, fearing to invade a wolf space, but she regretted it now, missing out on the sight. Jade told her she'd never shared it with anyone besides Grandpa, and immediately wished she hadn't because everything suddenly felt serious, the air full of unspoken hopes and fears, the only solution to which seemed to be to impulsively turn on her music player and ask Kanaya to dance with her...

 

...and here they are, foreheads pressed together, Jade breathing a little heavily from exertion and Kanaya matching her breath for breath despite not technically needing the air, and this time Jade doesn't even bother searching for something cool to say.

"Ohmigosh, we have **got** to get you playing DDR."

Kanaya's confused laugh of "I beg your pardon?" has barely left her lips before Jade is kissing her.

Considering how dorky the conversation would have become if she hadn't, it's probably just as well.


End file.
